Lisgar

Lisgar Collegiate Institute
Location: Ottawa, ON
Coaches	Ruth Crabtree Assistants: Chris Greenwood, Mark Meng
State Championships	2010 NAQT
National Championships	2008 Reach
Program Status	Unknown
School Size	Unknown
NAQT Page	link

Lisgar Collegiate Institute is a public school in downtown Ottawa, Ontario. Regularly placing highly in annual Ontario high school academic rankings, they are located several blocks south of the Parliament Buildings, and across the Rideau Canal from the University of Ottawa. A Reach for the Top team was established in the late 1990s under the guidance of Paul Paquet, and teams from Lisgar have been competitive at the city and provincial level nearly every year of existence. They won the 2008 Reach title by 5 points over UTS. The team has also been one of the most active Canadian participants in traditional tossup/bonus quizbowl in recent history, and the only Canadian team to participate at either major American quizbowl championship.

Early History

Lisgar began playing Reach for the Top in the 1966-67 academic year. Lisgar occasionally appeared during the CBC years of Reach for the Top, including a team that featured future CBC personality Shelagh Rogers.

Though they had no established team at the time (and probably didn't pay membership fees to Reach in September), a team from Lisgar appeared in 1995 as part of the controversy surrounding Bell that year. Bell's school board was in a teacher's strike, and the team was considered illegal for most of the year. A team from Lisgar (part of a different Ottawa school board) was assembled for regional play and heralded by SchoolReach director Sandy Stewart as "the correct team" to go to provincials. A few court proceedings and lawyers later, Bell ended up competing at provincials.

Archived news article: "Quiz masters reach to court to stay on show" by Brenda Branswell of the Ottawa Citizen, April 27, 1995, page B2.

Reach for the Top

Regional

Lisgar has been among the top 3 teams in Ottawa at Reach for the Top since the late 1990s. Lisgar has won or shared the Richard Mageau Trophy, awarded to the Ottawa Schoolreach League champions, in 2001, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009. In both 2008 and 2009, Lisgar shared the title with Merivale, after question problems have created unresolvable disputes in two consecutive finals. In 2010, however, Lisgar won by 10 points against Gloucester in the semifinals without controversy and decisively defeated Merivale in the finals.

Provincial

Lisgar has had mixed success at the Ontario provincial level. Though having qualified for the top ten playoff round in nine consecutive years (2001-2009), and ten out of eleven appearances all time, prior to the 2008 finals the team had won just one game. As of 2009, the team has a playoff record of 5-12. The team has regularly blamed these disappointments on the change in format between classroom-based round-robin matches and the televised playoffs. In 2008, Lisgar swept their round-robin division to take first seed for the playoffs, and would go on to defeat South Secondary (twice) and Vincent Massey, before losing the final game to UTS. By advancing to the final game, Lisgar became the first school to qualify for both the NAQT HSNCT and the Reach for the Top National Finals. In 2009, the team lost in the first round of the playoffs to Centennial Collegiate Vocational Institute. In 2010, the team failed to qualify for the provincial playoffs.

National

Despite their overwhelming success at the provincial and regional level, Lisgar has only appeared at the national finals once in their eleven-year existence. Lisgar won the 2008 Reach championship, defeating UTS in the final. See 2008 Lisgar.

In 2011, Lisgar was invited to Nationals as the 3rd Ontario team after the Saskatchewan Provincial Champion dropped out. Lisgar finished 3rd after losing to Centennial CVI in the semi-finals.

Quizbowl

Lisgar was one of the first Canadian teams to begin participating in tossup/bonus quizbowl. A team from Lisgar won the first three high school quizbowl events in Canada, though that streak was broken in 2008 when Merivale won that year's Ottawa Quizbowl Tournament. They often submit multiple teams, forming 5 teams of the 11-team field for the 2008 OQT.

Lisgar attended the Ontario Provincial Championships in April 2010 and finished 1st and 4th out of a pool of 21 teams. The A team won a one-game final against their provincial rivals UTS. The B team lost the first game of a disadvantaged third-place game to Woburn.

They have qualified for the 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 HSNCTs, despite not attending in 2008 because of Reach for the Top Nationals. Lisgar reached the playoffs in 2006 and 2007, with captain Jamie Cooper earning All-Star honors each time. They remain mildly bitter about their 310-300 loss to Troy in the second playoff round of the 2007 HSNCT. They did not attend the 2008 HSNCT after qualifying for Reach Nationals. In 2009, the team finished 5-5. They have been the sole representation from Canada at either the NAQT HSNCT or the PACE NSC, and are among only a few Canadian high school teams to play south of the border. In 2010, Lisgar sent two teams to the 2010 HSNCT, with their A team finishing 6-4 and their B team a respectable 4-6.

HSNCT Results

• 2006: 7-6
• 2007: 8-5
• 2008: 5-5
• 2010: Lisgar A: 7-5, Lisgar B: 4-6
• 2011: 5-5

The team has also competed open-level tournaments, competing in the 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 incarnations of the Ottawa Hybrid Tournament. In 2008, the team had the top two individual scorers, Nevin Hotson and Jeff Gao, respectively. The team formed an alumni team for 2008 VETO, and did so again in 2009, along with a team of current students. VETO 2009 was thought to be a simple Guerrilla style tournament with write-in questions, as exemplified in past tournaments, however because of the editing of Jerry Vinokurov, the tournament was made to reflect an mACF format. Some of the teams in attendance felt that this change disadvantaged the Lisgar high school because of a perceived increase in difficulty.

In October 2009, Lisgar sent a team to THUNDER and went 4-4 against a university playing field.

Lisgar Open

Lisgar hosted its first Reach for the Top tournament on December 1st, 2007, the 07 Lisgar Open. The event was notable for being one of few, if not the only, pre-qualifier tournament in Ontario. The Lisgar Open drew 13 teams from 7 schools, including Merivale, Colonel By, Tagwi, University of Toronto Schools, St. Joseph Secondary School (Mississauga), Gananoque and Lisgar itself. UTS finished in first place, followed by Merivale A in 2nd, Lisgar A in 3rd and Gananoque A in 4th.

The team hosted the 09 Lisgar Open in October 2009, a house-written tossup/bonus quizbowl tournament with some elements of Reach. The team will host a house-written Reach tournament in February 2011, mainly as an introduction to new players to the high school Reach circuit.

Current team

• Joe Su '12 (Co-captain)
• Alex Rochon '12 (Co-captain)
• Will Sanna '13
• Charles Li '13
• Akhil Garg '13
• Angela Li '13
• Rusaba Alam '13

Alumni

A few former Lisgar players have continued playing, or plan to continue playing quizbowl at the university level:

• Jessica Li, UBC
• Tamara Vardomskaya, Ottawa
• Jamie Cooper, Waterloo
• Simon Sokyrko, Ottawa
• Ben Hare, Toronto
• Belle Song, Toronto
• Nevin Hotson, RMC
• Jeff Gao, Waterloo
• Chris Greenwood, Guelph
• Celia Byrne, Toronto
• Jibril Jeewanjee, Carleton
• Vincent Jiang, Queen's
• Patrick Liao, University of Pennsylvania

See Also

• Edmontago

Title Succession

Reach for the Top Champion
Preceded by	Year	Succeeded by
London Central	2008	London Central